verano

T: I need to know that you're not gonna wake up in the morning and feel differently.
S: And I can't give you that. Nobody can.

(500) Days of Summer

time travels

I have never,

felt so surreptitiously wrapped in everything touchable, tangible

than to be in this moment, and to feel

what I felt, long, long time ago.

And I can't tell, if it's now or yesterday,

or the after effects of a yesteryear

that has brought all this momentum to this second,

and I'm swinging.

Swinging, forever

and ever, and ever

into the depths of what I don't know and what I don't care to know.

I know it pours out of me like some poor pitcher's laments,

but the brows

oh, the brows --

drawn on with the kohl and falling, limber

over the sides, washing away everything, 

and I'm to be,

the last bit of it all, 

and I know. I promise, I do;

but at this minute I am stillborn in silence

and I cannot ask for more

than to feel.

Feel, feel again,

the beautifully bolded outlines

of nus, maladroit corps

stirring the folds of opium-tinted warmth

and I softly, quietly, unravel.

grand finale

MIT Commencement Speech, year 1997.


Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97:

Wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone.
Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.

Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.

Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia.

Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.

what doesn't kill me, makes me stronger.

for the sake of reliving the days of xanga

enjoy.


1. When a telemarketer calls, do you screw around with them and say random crap to piss them off?
Once, I stole an idea off Youtube and said "Yes" to every single question he asked. I thought I was so clever.
More than once, I hung up on them.

2. Have you ever been to a psychic before? What was it like?
There was only one boy who agreed that it'd be interesting, and that we should go. 
We never did. He's now in Pennsylvania.


We haven't talked to each other in years. But I'm still convinced he's my mirror image.

3. What is your favourite type of omelet?


The kind with too much rice and too little oil and a ketchup smiley face on top.

4. Do you believe Subway food can really help your lose weight like it says on the commercials?


Not at all. But it feels good anyway to persuade myself that I'm eating healthier.

5. Do you sometimes go to sleep in the same shirt you wore earlier that day?


If it's large and comfy, yes, yes, and yes.

6. How often do you slack off on washing off your makeup?


All the time. But only because I wear makeup about once a year and I don't understand the importance of washing it off as soon as possible.

7. What do you do to get a guy to stop liking you?


It's not up to me to convince him he shouldn't like me. 

8. Would you rather have fruit inside Jello or Jello topped with whipped cream?


Fruit inside Jello! It's like a sugary, healthy snack with all all the goodness.

9. When was the last time you drew on the sidewalk with chalk?


Forever ago. Hopefully that changes soon.

10. Are adverbs confusing for you?


Words are my friends. I abuse them and use them the way they aren't meant to be, but only because they know me better than I do.

11. Have you read any Teen Help books, just for the heck of it?


I believe I've picked up a copy of "How to Survive Middle School" before.

12. Do you know anybody's parents who own a myspace?


No, I don't, but I've always admired the ones that had something along those lines.

13. When was the last "Deja Vu" feeling you got? What was it?


When I was writing an e-mail. It's difficult not to get a deja vu when you're feeling something as strong.

14. Do you like dill pickles? Do you like those sweet bread+butter pickles?


Of course I like dill pickles. They're too cute. I must say, though, I have never heard of this sweet bread & butter pickles combination.

15. Would you say you've gotten prettier since junior high?


I can't rightfully say or know, but I know I'm still as awkward as ever, with a little more class. (:

16. Do you think buttchins are cute?


Dimpled chins, maybe. Buttchins are a little too extreme.

17. Do you hate being poked?


There's something moderately annoying about pokes. But I do not mind.

18. Are there guys wearing girl pants at your school?


I hope to God not.

19. How often does your family use the grill and barbeque?


Practically never; I won't say never, because that's not too practical.

20. Do you have a Sadie's Hawkins dance coming up?


Technically, yes, but that's rather far away.

21. Do you like to drink any V8 products?


I used to. But I think I prefer plain tomato juice better.

22. Can you crack your toes?


No feeling better than cracking your toes after dancing for a long time.

23. Did you ever own a beta fish?


An alpha fish, too.
Not really.

24. Do you own any dry erase boards? Cork boards?


Both. Neither of them are up anywhere though. I plan on making use of them when I've got my own walls to paint and ceilings to decorate.

25. Does your family have a DVD camcorder?


My dad probably does. He has everything.

26. How often do you buy potato chips?


Occasionally. Always the kettle-cooked kinds or the salt & vinegar.

27. Is there a rocking chair in your house?


Two houses ago, I did.

28. Do you wear any other bottoms besides jeans to school?


Sweats are my best friend.

29. What do you think about Japan becoming allies with US?


When it comes to politics, I always question the need for human beings as a whole to have to have such a word as "allies." 


I suppose I have a bit of a hippie mantra.

30. What's your favourite dish cooked by your aunt?


My aunt? I have not seen her in years. I cannot remember a single detail about her face. It'd be rather wrong if I remembered the dishes she made, despite that. 

lethargic fray

It's like.

It's sort of like, sitting alone near the windows, lost in the noise and people-watching, a dull book at hand, and the smell of five hundred different varieties of coffee roasting threatening to bless you with a sneeze.. then hearing the lyrics you know as well as the photographs that go along with them. Being distracted, from momentary falterings, from more things to be dazed by.

It's kind of like, driving off the road and stopping on the side, the rain thud thud thudding away in rhythm of the windshield wipers, just to retrace the words to the song the local radio station fortuitously happened to play. Being steered away from the thoughts of the second, because the tune is too friendly, and the humming, too au fait a habit, to pass up.

All these things, I never meant to think, or speak out loud, or pen into words. But I do.. I do. Another day, I suppose. Another day, I'll catch it before the last few sips of frapp, the last few drops of bland precipitation.

baked beans and a toot tooting

Stealing idea off postsecretcommunity.com;

text me a secret, if you're in the US.

703 508 8799

open ears, open heart.

i'll send a secret back.

putting my trust in humanity.

everglow

Mm, mm. 

It rained today.

The blankets of brights lost their vivacity. I never got to satiate the silly need to feel the crisp underneath my feet. I wondered for a second why the windows fogged up, when the heat seemed to have escaped me anyway. 

Crunch.

One leaf, that eluded everything else. A moment's notice, of a reply from the nearby tree..

it was all I needed. It's there, of course, beneath the piles and piles of everything else categorized into everything but's and nothing else's. I thought I could withstand the fickle moods. I'm sure at one point, I felt invincible, infallible.

But of course, I still lie here debilitated.

I don't intend to, I don't want to, I never hoped for it. Not a single second of an 11:11 I wasted on impossibility. Reality being, I only make wishes that are out of my reach. I have too little spring in my jumps to catch a scent of the moon. 

Hah.

What a sadistic, masochistic souvenir you are.

tangerine

project love heals 2009.


i promise to:

1. forgive
2. listen
3. humble myself
4. keep words inside

the rule of four. it's not so hard to be restrainedly social, i think. it'll be okay. 

it'll be okay.

don't say you're sorry

Because I'm not even breaking.


But..


never mind. 


I am summer-less, memory-less, love-less. I'm not this terrible at remembering things because that's how I am. I forced myself to be. Heartbreak after heartbreak, phone call after phone call, grade after grade, season after season.. there's too little of it that I want to keep with me. I hate the sting that comes back every time I hear those lyrics. I'd rather go back to the day the sand underneath my dirty nails had a strangely wonderful kind of a magic that complemented the day, and I sat at home watching Titanic recalling my worry over an insignificant, but such a dear, goldfish. I've torn my heart, piece by piece, and left it with the summers that brought me love, family vacations that ventured upon double-deck buses and bland spaghetti. I don't recall why I've stopped reading Page Three of the Washington Post only to throw away the rest of it. I don't recall how I became this way.. so boring, so plain. So normal. I had once cherished those days that I spent steaming up the windows on Christmas Eve to leave a note for Santa and walked without the slightest sense of direction, or fear, for that matter. Just adventure. Exploring what more there was to my neighborhood, and discovering the secret paths. Looking on at the old man with the white bushy dog, who walked by the same place at the same time, every day. But now, I'm just Suyeon, with a hint of sarcasm. I have nothing interesting to offer. I can't quite distinguish who my first kiss was, and I don't have a story to tell about who my first love was.. because I can't tell. I know nothing about myself. What's a storyteller without stories? I wished upon countless dandelions. I've danced in the fields of Austria, picked pretty weeds, and eaten bugs. But..   I have no more. I've somehow become the last piece of myself. 


When I grow up, I want to collect all of these pieces, one by one. Even if that means losing the last piece of myself that I've saved for such a long time.

times new roman

i swore,

for the last time, it'd be.

a field of poppies it took

for one to come

another to leave,

and yet another to linger

in the depths of a forestful

sky, azules, stained crimson

in the waking of a

brightness

settling, lost in

an enthusiast's daydreams;

an interlocutor

between serendipity and

a mistake far gone.

inscribed,

entrenched for a lie that

never gave a penny.

it knew no mind

and befriended no pastures

none too sad,

a field of shattered pasts

i couldn't recollect

even with

an adieu to startle

the wakes of diminutive

chary susurration.

untitled

i am not

nothing.

i will not

let you convince me so either.

i am

bigger than life.

i will

continue to believe

that love has a place for me.

kissed by rose petals

the soulful melody

that sang, sang a little

boundless in

the lyrics it held.

shelf upon shelf,

leaning forever towards

a never after

and that foolish

sort of a love i held;

a moment's worth of

leaves that greyed,

the strands

that gave up pigments of

inflamed adoration.

bubble gum electric

i can't remember

the last time i felt

so slight

and

small.

and i thought

it'd be

the last of me.

the last of you?

because somehow, it turned to be

always about you

but never us

and i can't remember

half the things

that i used to

be so

so ecstatic about

except

the french dinners

and street lamps

and balancing along the concrete fence

stepping over grass

and feeling you breathe

and tandem bikes

that the sun only too happily

smiled for.

i don't remember

i can't remember.

a love in four-d

secretregrets.com:

"

I regret not being in your life after high school. "

"I regret that i can't tell you, mom how much i love you and how much you mean to me & i really want to be best friends with you."

"I regret living a lie for almost a year, even though I know I would be happier without you, I stick around for the kids sake and fear of the unknown. "

"I regret that I miss you, and smile when I get the chance to see you."

"i regret trying to be with you even after i knew you didn't want me anymore."

.. and if that isn't enough to say, there are too many of these posts, one after the other, all wishing for the same thing. Love. Care. Concern. Something to live for, something to find bliss in. When will we ever stop depending on others to carry us through? Are we really so incapable of being disconnected from this flawed, hurtful web of connections and feelings?

I ask so, not because I wish to reprimand anyone of their inability to distinguish independence from their concept of interdependence.

I ask so, because I suffer from the same disease, and all too much.

hello from a thousand miles away

the nonchalance of a fall to be,

subject to summer time exhilaration,

and that same old wrinkles etched

into the pages and pages of

a photograph yet to be forgotten.

a lazy bliss so still but

the sort of numbing, deafening

of a love to be, a love to not;

why the ivies cling, i'll never say

but the unrecognized pride that'll never die

i laugh, i laugh, i do.

rest in peace, memorandum,

and in all your pretty black & white

polaroids of vermilion sweet, i do.

le petit prince

i used to believe.

but now all i'm left with is a star. it tells me nothing. it shows me nothing. but it reminds me of everything. how can something so insignificant be so tremendously terrible but good?

"even the wisest men cherish a little nonsense now and then"

There's no combination of words

I could put on the back of a postcard

No song that I could sing

But I can try for your heart

Our dreams, and they are made out of real things

Like a, shoebox of photographs

With sepiatone loving

bemusement

sensical tunes.

the most of all, and their
nonsense lyrics.

imagine of being

perhaps, it wasn't so.
and a pick of the eyelash,
too safe
to be
written amongst the

sea breeze that called so.

on an ocean too far away,
and the waves
that stubbornly
deliver their only message..

esperanza.

every accentuated
stroke
of a flaw
of a coin toss

a cheated spontaneity
frosted, sweet, truth.

one second after the another

grew out of love, did i?

when the doors keep closing,
and the mind

is blank
to let no more colors seep through.
when words keep confusing,

and the heart

is p l a sti c
to pick a flower too shy of beauty.

retracing the same path on those

familiar, friendly lines.
suffocating warmth beyond all else.

when it suddenly grows old.
and tinkering,
tolling,
telling of a dusty bell i never knew to ring.

grew out of love, did i?

couldn’t say.

couldn't say.

things undone

that carousel ride you had
once promised, the ice
cream cones and their emulation
of the sun, that afternoon aired sun;
in all the wrong places, at the
complete minute hands of stolen
time, to wait an enternity for a chance
at that one brushstroke of bliss.
the caricatured hearts on the margins
of a mess untold and unfelt,
in sleepless starlit nights and the glow
of the lingering light so soft;
made to a perfect imperfection one can
never, distinguish, per se. that
wind which by all chances found
its dance among locks of charcoal --
in all the familiar places, and the parks
across the way, and the songs which
the birds' peals envied,
much too erratically, and
the unknown final strand of a web
which broke a moment too easily.

and the colors, those shades we never saw;
lost, to be discovered in a fickle while
ever so hurtfully lovely.

in a manner of speaking

at least now i know why.

and little tinker bell,
to ask peter pan how to catch a shadow.

sunrise, sunrise. looks like morning in your eyes

wintergreen lifesavers

i miss talking into the late night and not realizing what time it is. to be happily sleepy the next day, just to go through the same thing all over again. i miss my daddy taking my side in every argument i ever got into with my sister or my mom, except for that one time i refused to admit that the notebook was my sister's and not mine. i miss picking out the gray strands of his hair for 50 cents each. then losing it all back because i accidently picked a black strand. as silly as it is. as stupid as it is. im a broken faucet, you tell me.. i was never fixed to begin with, i don't think. faucets don't heal. and i dont know a plumper. so whats a drip drip dripping faucet to do? plain words. easy to understand. i dont think ive ever been so outright ..sensical. but mr wonka, he says even the wisest men are the most nonsensical of them all. i miss you. and you. and you. to live in a shell that's poked at everyday, but never visited.. it's no fun. all i want is nothing more than for you to hold me back when i try to run away. because i dont mean it. i dont. id rather not, but i do because i dont know what im doing. the love leaks over but no one bothers to scoop it back up. but i think im draining now. i suppose it's not normal to be a bottomless well. i shouldnt have tried to in the first place.
hello, goodbye.

i feel crushed

that i'll always be the singly stupid blame.
dear god,
i lost you a while ago, i think.
and i'm sorry i dont try to gain you back,
but you're not trying either.
i call it quits.
i think i'd rather be a quitter than a wistful wisher on a dream that'll never make it alive.

maybe?

hello.
i dont think this world is mine
i dont think anyone quite listens
i dont think the missing piece is very missed
i dont enjoy reading frankenstein.
i want a colorful threaded friendship bracelet
the kind you make at camps laughing over rocks at 2 am
why doesnt anyone ever pick up late at night?
to shrivel inside your own body is so exhausting
slowly slowly
forgotten and hidden
in an attic no one cares to visit.
la
la
lala
laaa.

i..

itsy bitsy spider

iSUPPORT
love in its every form, at its worst and at its best.